UK shoppers forced to cooperate with surveillance scheme: Report
A new report shows the British police are forcing people to have their faces scanned as part of a controversial surveillance scheme which is being rolled out in London.
A Tuesday report in the Evening Standard said police officers testing the Live Facial Recognition technology in central neighborhoods of London were treating shoppers in an invasive manner.
Officials in the Liberty human rights organization told the newspaper that anyone who declined to cooperate with police officers on the ground and avoided their cameras was treated as suspicious.
This comes despite a previous statement by the Scotland Yard, the investigative police force in London, saying that the trial roll-out of the scheme would not affect ordinary people and only those on police’s watch list would become involved.
The Metropolitan Police also said last week that “anyone who declines to be scanned will not be viewed as suspicious by police officers”.
It indicated that officers will make sure that the public are informed about the trial on Monday and Tuesday through signs on police vans and leaflets that will be handed out.
However, the Liberty released images of the police vans during the operation that had no signs of advertisement.
“The police have tried to suggest the roll-out of this invasive technology is an open and transparent trial. We have witnessed the opposite,” said Liberty’s Hannah Couchman, adding, “The use of unmarked vans and false assertions in the limited public statements available shows the police have no intention of gaining the public’s consent to roll out this mass surveillance technology.”
Rights campaigners have already criticized the deployment of live cameras for watching people on the streets and shopping centers in London. They insist the use of the new identification technology, which has proved to be very inaccurate during its previous trials, is a clear violation of people's privacy.
Police are expected to decide at the end of the year whether the technology could be helpful in reducing the rampant crime rates in London and other large cities in Britain.
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